


The Gambler

by knightship



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cute, Derek is Good with Kids, Family, M/M, Stilinski Family, mentions of animal harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:18:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightship/pseuds/knightship
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In years to come, Stiles will just point at Slippery Sam and say that's what started it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WHOOPS I really didn't mean to write this Tumblr is just inspiring okay. The event Derek saved Stiles' life in is some vague thing I made up in which Stiles is being sought after by a faerie, it chases him into town and makes him crash his Jeep into a pole, electrical wires are down, it circumnavigates the wires and manages to break Stiles' arm trying to get him out fo the Jeep, Derek shows up, knocks Stiles clear, and grabs the wire to electrocute the shit out of the faerie and himself, although he survives and the faerie goes POOF. Fairly public, although the Sheriff managed to cover up the more incriminating evidence by damagin some CCTV footage and claiming the witnesses were affected by a gas leak. To be clear, here are the family relations and ages of the children:
> 
> Adrianna is the Sheriff's younger sister, divorced her husband two years ago  
> Bradley: 7  
> Sophie: 6  
> Joshua: 4
> 
> Bill is Stiles' Mom's older brother, adopted Jenaveve, single  
> Jenaveve: 7
> 
> Title is from the song "The Gambler" by fun. Listen to it, seriously, ugh.

Somehow, don’t ask Stiles how, Derek gets invited to the Stilinski family picnic.

It probably has to do with the fact that Derek pretty publically saved his life a few weeks ago, and in that time frame his dad has had some kind of emotional aneurysm and is both accepting of the fact that he and Derek are somewhat friends, and pissed off that Derek is involved in pretty crazy supernatural stuff, that shall henceforth be labelled Pack Bullshit, that usually pulls Stiles into the fray. So, in some way, his dad seems to be trying to establish some type of normalcy.

He really picked the wrong family to try to do that with.

They arrive at the park in a reasonable amount of time, which is to say that no one else is there yet, and claim the small pavilion that little kids are trying to amble all over. Stiles, in his arm cast and sweating in the hundred-plus degree weather, instantly sprawls over the surface of one of the tables as Derek herds the children out. For a while they sit there with their tupperware container of sandwiches threatening to go rancid in the heat (whoever let Stiles think that making egg salad sandwiches in this weather was a good idea should be fired) and then, because she always shows up second, Aunt Adrianna comes screeching into the parking lot with her three tiny monkey children, and there’s a round of kissing and hellos and how are yous and fucking Christ, Stiles, what did you do to your arm, oh, is this the boyfriend?

“No, for the last time, I’m not gay, Aunt Adrianna,” Stiles mutters into her cheek. She hugs with her entire body, which is mostly comprised of boobs and voluminous brunette hair, so the only safe place Stiles has been able to put his face since he was tall enough to get over the boobs is kind of on her face, and he’s speaking into her eyeball.

“Oh, hush, you silly thing,” she says, and then releases him. Bradley, the oldest monkey and therefore the least kraken-like of the three, has already released his knees and is staring up the length of Derek’s body, mouth agape and eyebrows pushed in.

“If he’s not your boyfriend, then why is he here?”

Stiles is unsure what to say for a moment, and then finally caves to his original plan.

“He’s my friend. Like Scott.”

Scott, who came to the family picnic when Stiles was thirteen, has never quite forgiven him for uttering those words, because the look of manic delight that comes over Bradley’s face is truly frightening. Friends, for the Stilinskis, is an honored title. It has to be proven. And that means putting up with all kinds of bullshit from the family. For a minute, Stiles almost feels bad for Derek, and then Sophie lets go of his knees as well and starts climbing Derek’s pants like her singular goal in life is to see if those things are suction-cupped to his ass or if they will in fact fall down under the weight of a six year old.  
“You should’ve worn a belt, son,” his dad says, not doing a damn thing to hide his amusement as Derek grabs his waistband for dear life, and then Joshua, tiny little four year old Joshua, finally lets go of Stiles’ leg, looks at Derek with his watery brown eyes and thrusts his hands up in the air, bouncing on his toes.

“Up! Wanna swing! Up!”

“What does he want?” Derek asks, and to answer him Bradley climbs on a table and leaps off of it, to ambush Derek from behind and latch his skinny little arms around Derek’s throat. For a second, Stiles has a moment of panic, because he’s come kind of close to having his arms around Derek’s throat from behind once, and he nearly lost that arm for it. But Derek just chokes and then loops an arm against his side, which Bradley hooks his foot into and uses as leverage to boost himself onto Derek’s shoulders, grabbing at his hair and legs swinging once he’s settled.

“He wants to hang off of your arm like a monkey bar. Stiles does it all the time.”

Derek looks up at Stiles as another little pair of hands finds his shoulders and uses them as leverage to get some height. After a second, he bends down enough that Joshua can get his arms looped over Derek’s bicep, and then he’s up again and swinging him gently.

“Oh, would you look at that,” Aunt Adrianna says as Bradley uses Derek’s hair to steer him out of the pavilion, Sophie navigating with wild pointing and Joshua shrieking happily. Stiles grins and sits down next to his dad and his aunt, watching for a minute.

They talk, mostly about how Stiles hurt himself and how he’s doing in school for a while, and after that Uncle Bill shows up with Jenaveve, who doesn’t even come over to hug Stiles, just runs straight to Derek, who has plopped right down in the sandbox (ew, Stiles has been coming to this park for long enough to know that cats poop in that sandbox, ew) with Stiles’ cousins and looks to be competing for who can build the biggest pile of sand.

“Your boyfriend, Stiles?” Uncle Bill asks, and Stiles is starting to get genuinely offended.

“Hold up, okay, how come all of you are instantly assuming that he and I-”

“Stiles!” Derek calls out as he jogs up to them, shaking sand as he goes. “I need to borrow your belt.”

“My wha-hey,” he objects, although it’s kind of weak, when Derek just bends over and starts unbuckling his belt. He slides it out and loops it through his own pants, giving one last shake of sand and then a flat, “I dare you to fucking tell me no” look to Stiles, and then runs back off to go play in the poopy sandbox.

He looks around to see his dad, aunt and uncle all staring at him expectantly, and Stiles just throws his hands up in the air.

After that, he helps unload the food from his aunt’s and uncle’s cars, while Derek and the four kids seem to be huddled together and discussing something of great interest. Once he’s got the last cooler into the pavillion, he’s too suspicious not to go over and investigate, and besides, Uncle Bill and Aunt Adrianna are trying to get Dad to talk about Mom, and, uh, no.

“...so what happens if you can see the moon in the daytime?” Jenaveve asks as he sits down next to them, and Derek shrugs. “Not much. It’s still there during the day anyways, even if you can’t see it. Seeing it just makes me want to howl a little.”

Sophie giggles from where she’s claimed a spot in his lap, and he’s sort of half-reclined in the grass, so she’s sprawled across his chest and kicking her little sandaled feet dangerously close to his crotch. Bradley is matching up the bottom of his sneakers to Derek’s and frowning at the difference as Joshua rips up grass shoots and Jenaveve braids her hair. Derek reaches over, careful not to disturb Sophie, and fixes it when Jenaveve messes up.

“So like, if there’s a lunar eclipse, do you freak out and turn into a werewolf in the daytime?” Bradley asks, gnashing his teeth and making claws for emphasis. Derek frowns, tucking a tiny white flower he finds in the grass into Jenaveve’s red hair with utter concentration.

“You’re thinking of solar eclipses, when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth. Now those are wild. My sister once ran all the way to Death Valley during a solar eclipse.”

“Really?” Sophie asks, leaning up so her little face is level with Derek’s. He grins at her, soft and happy with her hair falling in blonde tendrils over his face.

“Yeah, really. And then when she got back she drank a whole Big Gulp slushie in one go.”

“Nuh-uh! No one can do that!” Bradley proclaims, crawling up Derek’s legs to punch him in the gut. Derek huffs and grabs his hand.

“What’re you doing? Trying to claim dominance over me, huh?”

That starts a tussle, the three older kids piling on Derek at once while Joshua looks mostly confused. Stiles gathers the kid into his lap, trying to disguise his astonishment as Derek rolls, cupping an arm around the three kids carefully so that their heads don’t smack against the ground, and then he stands up on his knees and makes an impressive scary face, looming with claw hands over them.

“I’m the Alpha!” he growls, and Jenaveve shrieks and kicks him, right in the sternum. Derek falls on his back in the grass with a quiet “Uff,” and the three of them pile on top again. Jenaveve is the first one to stand up on his chest and mimic his werewolf moves, and she hops a little as she makes giant clawing motions and bares her teeth.

“No, I’m the Alpha! Arooooo!” she proclaims, and by then Stiles is laughing so hard that Joshua’s squirming in his grip, trying to get in on the action. Then Aunt Arianna hollers, “Lunch!” and the kids are off like rockets, and Stiles lets Joshua scamper off with the others.

He gets up and stands over Derek, who grins unabashedly up at him from in the grass. His tank top, previously white, is brown and yellow and green with dirt and sand and grass stains, and his hair is all kinds of atrocious. One of Sophie’s tiny, sparkly butterfly clips clings to his bangs, and Stiles leans over and pulls it out with a snicker.

“Man. Never would’ve pegged you for a ‘rather play with a bunch of kids under eight than with adults’ kind of guy. I bet you’re a hoot at daycares.”

“Nah. With the whole criminal record thing, can’t really get into those,” Derek says, and grabs a hold of Stiles’ cast to haul himself up to his feet. 

“I take it it’s usually your job to wrangle the pack?” Derek asks, brushing himself off a little. God, his jeans are ruined forever.

“Do you have cat shit on your jeans?”

“Where?” Derek asks, bending at all kinds of ridiculous angles to try and see. Stiles shakes his head.

“Nowhere that I see, I was just asking because there’s usually cat shit in that sandbox. Stay outta there.”

“Alright. I guess that answers my question,” Derek says, seeming a little miffed that Stiles redirected him, and he chuckles a little.

“Yeah, okay, I usually make sure no one gets hurt and I push them on the swings, but- and don’t laugh, okay- usually they’re the ones that have to ask for the first aid kit, because every single year I try to conquer Slippery Sam, and every single year I bash my head off something. Last year I even had to go to the hospital for staples.”

“Slippery Sam is the jungle gym shaped like a dome, right?” Derek asks, craning around to look. Stiles sighs, glaring at that fat, colorful bastard.

“Yup. I swear to god they grease the bars on the top.”

“Hmm.” Derek says, and looks very fucking intrigued. Stiles decides to distract him with food, and they join the ravaging hordes to retrieve paper plates and get some sandwiches and Uncle Bill’s awesome macaroni casserole. Derek tows him away from the kids and over to his dad once they have their stuff, and the first thing Derek says is,

“Bradley and Sophie miss their dad,” and then jams half an egg salad sandwich in his mouth.

“Bradley and Sophie told you about that?” Dad asks, and Stiles is pretty surprised too. Uncle Jared has been gone for two years now, packed up and moved to Arizona with some girl ten years younger than him (and only two years older than Stiles, ew), and he hasn’t seen his kids since. Bradley and Sophie, though they acted a little scared and more dependent on each other afterwards, have never talked about it, and Aunt Adrianna continuously despairs that her kids might be developing issues because of it.

Derek nods, takes a humongous swallow, and washes it down with soda before he continues.

“Bradley looked up his girlfriend on Facebook at a friend’s house and printed out a picture. That’s why he keeps hitting girls in his class with blonde hair, and why Sophie wanted to dye hers pink,” he says, and when the both of them stare at him, he stops.

“What?”

“What the hell did you say to those kids?” his dad asks, soft and wondrous, and Derek’s face goes a little tight and uncomfortable. Stiles elbows him good-naturedly.

“He told them the truth about being a w-e-r-e-w-”

“Are you serious? That worked?” his dad interrupts, and Derek squirms some more.

“I might have told them that I could smell that they were sad, and that if they didn’t say something soon, they’d turn into wolves too,” he admits, and then gives Stiles a spooked look and crams more food into his mouth, like Stiles is going to make him admit to something awful if he doesn’t have some way to shut himself up.

“Wow. Good work, Derek. Huh,” his dad says, and then gets up and goes to talk to his sister for a minute. She makes an amazed sound, and then promptly comes over and says, 

“You are a godsend. You need money, you call me up and I’ll let you sit with my kids, hundred bucks a night. Seriously. And if you ever need anything, honey, don’t you dare be afraid to ask the Stilinskis,” and then plops a smacking wet kiss on Derek’s cheekbone and Joshua into his lap.

Derek looks so stunned that Stiles manages to steal all of Derek’s macaroni casserole and has eaten three bites of it by the time he notices.

Soon after that the kids disperse again, and Derek joins their ranks with a goal very firmly in mind, and as soon as Stiles sees him heading towards Slippery Sam, he excuses himself from the discussion of how dare Stiles not date that man, what is he, blind, and his father’s extreme discomfort.

“Don’t do it!” he yells, just as Derek slings Joshua onto his back and ducks through the bars of Slippery Sam, until he’s in the center of the dome. He grabs the bars a foot over his head carefully, and as soon as he starts to lift his feet off the ground his hands slip. He would’ve gone down straight on top of Joshua if he didn’t twist and land on his feet in a crouch. Jenaveve crows from the top of the slide, Sophie and Bradley pushing at her for space and watching avidly.

“Come on, Derek!” Sophie screams, and Stiles grins, watching Derek stand back up and glare at Slippery Sam with the kind of hatred it’s taken Stiles nearly eighteen years to gather up. And then, after a moment of consideration, Derek stretches up and hooks his arm over a bar, and then gets his other arm hooked over the bar and pulls his legs up and gets them hooked over a bar too. Joshua squeals, gripping so hard he must be choking Derek, and then with a sudden surge Derek pulls himself up through the space between the bars and sits up, wobbling for balance until he can get a foot braced in front of him.

“This is the hard part, standing up,” Stiles comments to Bradley, and gets a flaily “Shut up!” hand in his face for his trouble.

Derek shifts so that more of his weight is on the bracing foot, bends his other leg so that he can get it on a bar, and then unbends it so he’s standing almost directly on the center of Slippery Sam.

And then Joshua throws his hands up and screams in victory, and Derek startles hard enough that the slippery ass bars go out from underneath his feet. Instead of going down through, he tucks forward, Joshua now in his arms, and rolls down the whole thing. Stiles hears a couple of pretty bad, loud “DONG” noises on the way down, and as soon as he reaches them, Derek goes, “OW,” and Joshua starts crying.

“Hey, no, you’re okay, little man, right?” Derek asks, checking Joshua over carefully. Stiles can see blood, but none of it’s on Joshua.

“Derek, holy shit, I think you busted your head- oh, Holy fucking Ghost, Derek, uh-”

“In a second,” Derek dismisses, and gathers Joshua close, tucking him in under his chin.

“It’s alright, you’re not hurt, the scary part is over,” he says softly, and Joshua hiccups a few times, whining, and then says quiet, “Momma.”

“Okay, Bradley’s going to take you to Momma now,” he says, and hands Joshua to his brother and shoos him away quickly. Bradley has seen the blood, and he looks pale.

“Girls, go over with Bradley, okay? I gotta make sure Derek’s alright,” Stiles says, but Derek grabs his arm and hauls himself up, eyes a little glazed but his back straight.

“I’m fine, seriously,” he says, but Stiles is looking at the back of his head, and, uh, he can see white, okay, no.

“Holy crap, is that your skull?” Jenaveve blurts, and Derek reaches up to feel it, grimacing.

“A little. It’s cool though. Werewolf, remember? You wanna watch it heal?”

Sophie and Jenaveve exchange a look, and then crowd close to the back of Derek’s head as he crouches down for them to look.

“That’s so freaking cool,” Jenaveve breathes, and for seven, she’s awfully immune to the sight of blood. Sophie looks too fascinated to be grossed out as the meaty part of the wound closes over, covering up the skull, and then eventually skin and hair come out too, leaving nothing but a lot of blood.

“I want to be a werewolf when I grow up,” Sophie declares somberly, looking a little starry-eyed, and Stiles snorts and scoops her up onto his hip.

“No, you really don’t, Soph. Werewolves are a bunch of daredevil idiots who make people worry about them all the time.”

“You were worried?” Derek asks. Jenaveve swings off of his arm as they walk back to the pavillion, and Stiles glares, although it’s kind of pathetic when he’s so sweaty and Sophie’s blonde hair is sticking to his face, and his shorts are falling down.

“I could see your skull. Usually when that happens, someone dies.”

“Usually,” Derek says, waggling his eyebrows, the bastard, “that person isn’t a werewolf.”

“You’re just being cute because you won the approval of children,” Stiles says, letting Sophie drop down to the ground when they reach the pavilion. She and Jenaveve go bombard Uncle Bill, who is a doctor, with a billion questions about head injuries and werewolves, and Derek heads around the other side of the pavillion, where there are really awful bathrooms and a drinking fountain that’s really just a pipe jutting out of some concrete with a button on it so you can control the water flow. Derek ducks his head under it to wash off the blood as Stiles watches.

“So now you think I’m cute,” Derek says, when he surfaces, his hair dripping and his shirt even more stained, and now turning kind of see-through.

“You-shut up. That’s not the point. The point is that you deliberately did the opposite of what I said just to impress the kids! Which is- why do you need to impress my baby cousins anyways?”

Derek looks, for a second, like he might get belligerent, and then his shoulders slump.

“I want your family to like me,” he says, shrugging like that’s no big deal, and Stiles stares.

“Uh. Why?”

Derek frowns at him and swipes a hand through his hair, slicking it back in what should be the most ridiculous way but winds up being really hot, even though he has pieces sticking up like pinfeathers. 

“Why do you think, Stiles?” he growls, but it’s not angry, more like embarrassed.

“Wait. Is that why you and Scott have been trying to get along all summer? Because you want me to like you?”

Derek thrusts his hands out like “Tada!”, only he’s going red around the throat, like he’s-

Oh. He made Derek blush. His dad invited Derek to their family picnic, and Derek impressed his dad and his aunt and maybe Uncle Bill and Bradley and Sophie and Jenaveve and Joshua, all in one day, just to make him like him. And he made Derek blush.

Stiles feels warm all the way to his toes, and he’s sure he’s grinning like a goof, because Derek’s mouth is twitching and he looks kind of wary, like he’s not sure if Stiles is going to be cool with this but he hopes so.

“Holy shit, you’re a giant softie! I can’t believe you! And- oh my god! You were totally going to kiss me!”

“What, when,” Derek says, but he looks guilty, and Stiles pushes him.

“When Melissa was putting my cast on! You got all weird and close and you ducked down and then Scott walked in and sprayed you with Lysol and you chickened out, you pussy!”

“Stiles!” his dad calls, “Language!”

“Sorry!” he calls back, but he can already hear Joshua yelling “Pussy! Pussy!” and he’s going to be in trouble as soon as he goes back in the pavillion, but he doesn’t even care.

“I didn’t chicken out, Scott almost got me in the face!” he says, but Derek is grinning now too, and he pushes Stiles a little bit like he’d rather pull him close instead, so Stiles grabs him by the belt and pulls until they’re nose to nose, and he wishes the cast didn’t cover his other hand, otherwise he’d have it in Derek’s stupid sexy wet hair.

“I can’t believe you nearly electrocuted yourself to death saving me from a fairy and then were scared away by Lysol, Jesus,” he says, grinning, and Derek snorts and rubs his cheek against Stiles’ for a second before kissing him, soft and sweet.

“Stiles and Derek sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” Bradley yells, and Derek breaks away to yell, 

“There are no trees involved in this, Bradley! Find a new rhyme!”

Stiles laughs until he feels dizzy, and then Sophie comes out of the pavillion and declares a race to the merry-go-round. Derek raises his eyebrows at Stiles, who rolls his eyes and swats him on the ass, and they race to the merry-go-round.

Stiles ends up getting a week’s grounding for teaching Joshua a new swear word, but at least he’s not going to the hospital this time. Although he kind of wishes he were, after he sits down next to Derek after their tenth run at pushing the merry-go-round and just collapses into him, and Derek pets his neck even though it’s too hot for it, and Aunt Adrianna makes all kinds of innuendo and Uncle Bill acts hilariously scandalized. Dad, for his credit, simply offers Derek a standing invitation to the family picnic, which makes Stiles grin and Derek blush some more. Sophie actually cries when they leave, but Derek gives her a kiss on the cheek and promises to babysit sometime soon, so his cousins are happy at least.

“God, what an afternoon,” he says, once they’re in the Jeep and pulling away. Derek grins from the backseat, leaning forward to revel in the air conditioning and also maybe tickle Stiles’ wrist with his fingertips whenever his dad isn’t looking.

“Yup. Can’t wait til next year.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Derek Hale pees on children, and Stiles is secretly the best babysitter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listened to I Wanna Be the One while writing this, also by fun., and also heartrendingly cute and about children. 
> 
> If you'd like a mental image of Joshua, just think of that kid from Looper, the one that's all solemn and sort of creepy cute? Yeah, him.
> 
> Also, the wonderful, magnificent, talented sostrangechild on tumblr drew me [this!](http://sostrangechild.tumblr.com/post/45252006602/tall-people-make-good-swings) It's so freaking cute, I can't even. <333333

“What the f-fudge is this?” Stiles says, because what the hell do you say when you come across your twenty-something year old boyfriend covered in bright pink and blue paint up to his elbows?

“Derek’s dyeing my hair!” Sophie squeals, beating her heels against the rungs of the stool she’s sitting on. Sophie’s hair is streaked pink, and Bradley’s dark brown head is spiked with bright blue from where he sits at the Stilinski kitchen table, a towel wrapped around his shoulders. Joshua is coloring next to him, but there’s blue streaks on his hands and on the towel. As soon as Derek looks up, Stiles cracks up.

“Oh my god, who got you in the face?”

Someone, some tiny genius has painted pink cat whiskers across Derek’s face, and he looks so frustrated that he’s actually going red. Oh man, even his ears are turning red. Stiles flings a hand over his face, because if he keeps looking he’s going to burst out into giggles and Derek will be bitchy for the rest of forever.

“Me!” Sophie yells, and Stiles high-fives her.

“This, this is great,” Stiles gushes, and then fumbles to put down his bags and dig in his pocket. Derek smacks his arm with a big blue-splattered whack, and now there’s blue on his arm.

“No. No pictures. You’ll send them to Scott and then I’ll have to kill you both,” Derek says, and Joshua looks up with wide eyes.

“Not really kill, Josh, Derek’s just being a drama queen,” Stiles soothes, then starts unloading TV dinners onto the table.

“I got TV dinners for you guys, because Aunt Adrianna doesn’t trust me with a stove, which is a good distrust to have. So who wants dinosaur chicken nuggets?”

Bradley swipes the nuggets, Joshua gets the macaroni, and since Sophie is the slowest, she gets pork chops. Then suddenly Derek’s phone is chiming an alarm tone, and Derek whips the towel off of Bradley’s shoulders.

“Go get in the tub, Bradley, and wash the gunk out of your hair,” Derek says, and Bradley scrambles to do as he’s told, socked feet thumping on the wooden floors as he runs upstairs.

“I’m not gonna have to get in the tub with Bradley, am I? He always tries to pee on me when we have to share,” Sophie grumps, and Derek makes a face over her head like he’s trying valiantly not to laugh, and Stiles has to lean over Joshua to look at his drawing, because Derek’s face whiskers fucking crinkled and he’s either going to squeal like a girl or pee himself laughing.

“Whatcha drawin’, Josh?”

The paper is a giant expanse of white and blue, no details, just hunks of crayon from where Joshua is pressing too hard.

“‘S a pond,” Joshua grunts, and the good humor leaks out of Stiles like he’s a faulty water balloon. 

Derek had the good sense to know that a hell of a lot of people are going to be circulating through his kitchen now that the Hale house is rebuilt, and instead of a normal table, there’s a picnic table with attached benches. Stiles climbs onto the bench next to Joshua, and sits close enough that their legs touch.

“You wanna talk about it, bud?” he asks, and Joshua frowns deeply at his paper before shaking his head.

“Talk about what?” Derek asks, but he’s more focused on combing pink into Sophie’s hair than what Joshua’s doing, and Stiles waves him off.

Ten minutes of watching Joshua take his frustration out on a piece of paper later, Derek declares Sophie’s hair done, and she goes to join her brother in the bath once Derek convinces her that all she has to do is scream and she’ll be rescued from being peed on.

“Hey, c’mere,” Stiles says, and tugs Derek out into the hallway.

“Adrianna gave me the hair dye, she’s been meaning to do it but she’s been busy, so she asked if I could,” Derek explains quickly, but Stiles just flaps his hands, and glances back into the kitchen. Joshua has a new piece of paper, and is still coloring with the white and blue crayons.

“How long has he been coloring like that?”

“I don’t know, a half hour? Why?” Derek asks, and Stiles sighs.

“Just- he’s drawing a pond. Last winter a kid in their neighborhood stole this cat that Joshua had been feeding, it was just a little kitten, and he threw it in the pond. Joshua went to the hospital because he tried to save it and nearly got hypothermia.”

Derek stares, and then glances back into the kitchen too.

“He’s four, and he jumped in a pond to save a cat?”

“Yeah, he’s a good swimmer, I taught him when he was like, really little,” Stiles says, and Derek shakes his head, looking a little close to laughing.

“No, I mean, what the hell are you Stilinskis made of?”

“Shut up,” Stiles says, and he punches Derek hard to express his displeasure. Derek rubs at it ruefully, which makes Stiles frown because yeah, that did not hurt him.

“Okay, so, he’s got some trauma about this?” Derek says, and Stiles lets a little of his ire go at Derek’s concerned tone.

“Yeah. He’s been going to a kid psych, but another thing about Stilinskis is, we treat mental health professionals with disdain and stubbornness,” Stiles says, and Derek hums.

“You want me to try to-?”

“Yeah. You are, after all, the Stilinski whisperer,” Stiles says with a grin, and Derek smirks. His cat whiskers crinkle. Stiles is officially dead, and leans forward plant a kiss on Derek’s mouth because he can.

Suddenly there’s a piercing scream upstairs, and Derek sighs, exasperated and fond, and peels off his gloves before he disappears to go whisper at some Stilinski kids about peeing on each other in the bathtub.

Stiles goes back into the kitchen, and since he can’t hover over Josh anymore than he already is, starts putting TV dinners into the oven and coming up with more and more creative, child-proof curses as he tries to follow the directions, but they don’t make any sense and why do they have to contradict? Why can’t he just put them all in at the same time? They’re all the same brand, God spam it, so why can’t they all cook for the same amount of time?

“You gotta cut the film on the mashed potatoes,” Josh says helpfully, and now there’s a brown scribble in the middle of his blue and white picture. Stiles is going to explode with aggressive worry, and then Sophie comes bursting in, wrapped in Stiles’ orange towel and yet still soaked, and also naked as a jay bird.

“Sophie, you have to wear panties in this house,” Stiles says, and she frowns up at him, a pink lock of hair stuck to her face.

“How come?”

“‘Cause no one wants to see your butt,” Josh retorts, and Sophie actually seems to consider that for a second, before she says,

“I’m gonna be in Derek’s pack one day, and then I’ll never have to wear clothes.”

“Derek wears clothes like, eighty percent of the time, Soph,” Stiles points out, and she whines, pulling her towel over her face and stamping her feet a little. Stiles takes the opportunity to kneel down and rub her dry, and she huffs loudly but acquiesces to it. When Stiles pulls the towel off to tuck around her waist, her hair is damp and frizzy.

“Go get some pjs on and I’ll blow dry your hair, ‘kay? And maybe braid it, if you be good,” he says, and Sophie brightens and disappears again, just as Derek comes in holding a red-faced but drowsy looking Bradley, wrapped in a blue towel and also still wet.

“C’mon, man, you gotta dry these boogers off or they’ll get sick,” Stiles scolds, and rubs Bradley vigorously. Who doesn’t do anything but grunt, when usually he’s so grumpy about being autonomous. 

“What’s the matter, huh?”

Bradley tucks his face into Derek’s neck, looking embarrassed, and Derek looks quietly abashed.

“I might have said that if he peed on Sophie again, I’d pee on him, and he didn’t believe me,” Derek says, and Stiles doesn’t get it for a second until Derek looks like he’s waiting for Stiles to yell at him, and he gapes.

“Okay, we’re not telling Aunt Adri that you peed on her son, and werewolf rules no longer apply to parenting skills, dude, like, what the hell.”

“Well, he won’t pee on his sister again,” Derek grumbles, and Stiles plucks his (ugh, heavy) cousin out of Derek’s arms and sets him on the floor.

“Go get in your pjs. Later we can hold Derek down and make him eat chocolate. Did you know that he hates chocolate? That’s crazy, isn’t it? And we can torture him with it’s sweet dark cocoa-flavored goodness.”

“Okay,” Bradley says mournfully, and wanders off to get his pjs on.

“You wanna take a bath or a shower, Josh?” Stiles asks, and Joshua sets his crayons down with a sigh and brushes crusts of wax off the table.

“My ducks are at home,” he says, looking dejected, and Stiles wants to squish his sweet, sad little face so badly but he knows he’d get rejected, so he says very seriously, “Well, I have a toy shark on my desk that you can use if you want?”

Joshua’s eyes glimmer with the kind of fantastical glee that Stiles has come to expect from Scott, and he races off to find Stiles’ toy shark.

“You wanna handle the older midgets while I get the younger one?” Stiles asks, and Derek is suddenly staring at him really intensely. It’s kind of a given in their relationship, and so Stiles doesn’t even react to it except to smile, and then Derek is crowding him close to the counter and humming happily, rubbing kisses into his mouth and making grabby hands in his shirt.

“Hm?” Stiles says, when Derek pulls back enough to look at him, one hand coming up to caress his jaw.

“You’re very good with them,” he says, and Stiles raises his eyebrows.

“Not as good as you.”

“Yeah, but it’s not a competition, and you know them better than I do. I know how to relate to them, and you know how to treat them. I dunno. It’s just. I love you,” he says, and kisses Stiles again before he can say anything more.

“Okay,” he says lamely when Derek pulls away, but he looks relieved, not hurt, which Stiles doesn’t understand at all. And then he disappears, and he can hear Derek start to sort out the fight between Sophie and Bradley about whose pajamas are whose.

Unsure of what the hell is going on, Stiles traipses upstairs to where Joshua is methodically trying to shirk off his clothes with a toy shark in one hand. The tub is kind of gross, so he runs the water to wash soap bubbles and dirt down the drain as he helps Josh tug his shirt off.

“Hey, Stiles?” Josh asks, staring at the shark in his hand as Stiles stoppers up the tub to fill it, hot water running and Mr. Bubbles waiting patiently.

“Yeah bud?”

“Where do cats go when they die? Do they go to Heaven, like the dogs in that movie?”

Stiles sits down on the toilet, sighing.

“Well, I think that cats do go to Heaven, but no one really knows for sure. Where do you think they go?”

Joshua frowns heavily at the shark, and Stiles sighs again and picks him up to lift him into tub.

“No more thinking tonight, mister. Squiggles was a very good cat, wasn’t he? So he must have gone to cat Heaven, and he’s happily playing with pretty girl cats and hunting catnip toys and-”

“What’s it feel like to drown?” Joshua asks, and Stiles freezes, staring at his cousin. Joshua stares right back with big, brown, solemn eyes and Stiles doesn’t know what to say.

“I don’t know,” he says, even though he does, he’s come so perilously close, he’s still so freaked by the idea, and he knows too much about the physiological process to be healthy.

“I bet it doesn’t feel good,” Joshua says, and he shoves his shark under the water and squeezes until there are no more bubbles left inside it’s hollow body.

“No, I guess not, but it’s better than some things, I guess,” he says, and Josh frowns.

“Like what?”

Stiles lets out a frustrated breath, rubbing his neck with one hand as he upends the bottle of bubble soap into the nearly full tub.

“I don’t know, Josh.”

“Would dying from being sick be worse?” he asked, and Stiles could remember how weak Josh had been, how deathly sick and pale he’d been in that hospital bed, how Sophie and Bradley had cried themselves silly.

“Yes,” he says, voice hoarse, and before Josh can ask another question he dumps a cupful of water of his head. It’s worth it to see him splutter and get indignantly pink, and Stiles grins with a cheeriness he doesn't feel as he squirts shampoo into Josh's hair and starts scrubbing.

"Stiles, get off, I can do it," Josh complains, and Stiles let's him take over, even though his hair is mostly clean already.

"The doctor lady says my questions are morbese, and that I should focus on other stuff."

"You mean morbid, " Stiles corrects, and scoops up more water to rinse Joshua's hair. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, cheeks puffed out as Stiles pours. When the suds are gone he blinks, pushing brown curls out of his face. 

"What's that mean?"

"It means really sad, and you know what Dr. Irving's name is, you can quit acting like you don't."

Joshua frowns and takes the soap out of his hand to start soaping up a washcloth. Stiles stacks bubbles on his head as he washes himself, and when he's done Josh ducks under the water to rinse himself off.

"You wanna stay in the tub for a bit or do you want mac and cheese?"

"I'll stay for a minute," Josh says, sinking down into the water and pushing the shark through the bubbles.

"You know, it's okay to be scared and sad about what happened, " Stiles says slowly, "but you shouldn't get hung up on it. There's other stuff-”

“-to worry about?”

“Uh, no. Well, yes, I mean, there’s always stuff to worry about, but, Josh, you’re the littlest. You don’t have to worry about this stuff because there’s always going to be someone there to protect you, whether it’s me or your mom or Brad and Sophie.”

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt because of me,” Josh mutters into the bubbles, and Stiles sighs and pulls the drain.

“I know. Don’t give me that look, I do! My friends are a bunch of werewolves and I’m only human, you think I don’t know what it’s like to be weak?”

Josh frowns then shrugs, patting at the bubbles as they get sucked down the drain.

“You’re still big enough to save a cat,” Josh says grumpily, and Stiles sighs.

“Yeah, maybe. And so will you, one day. Dad already says you look like a little clone of me at four.”

Joshua’s mouth ticks up in a smile.

“It’s the moles,” he says, and touches a hand to his nose, where there’s a mole hidden in the crease of his nostril.

“Yeah, probably,” Stiles says, grinning, and holds up a towel for Josh to step into and be rubbed down with. Then he lifts Josh onto his hip and carries him downstairs, where Derek looks like he’s somehow mastered TV dinners.

“You want help with your pj’s or are you good?” he asks Josh, and Josh wriggles to be let down, pulling the towel close around him as he wanders off to the bedroom.

“So I guess I don’t have to use my Stilinski whispering powers after all,” Derek says, nudging him, and of course he heard all that.

“Guess not. Hope I said the right stuff, though.” 

“You did your best. Except that part about you being weak, that was bullshit,” Derek says, and then Bradley chokes on a chicken nugget.

“Derek said a swear word!” Sophie sing-songs, and Derek snorts.

“Yes I did, but I’m old enough to be allowed to, and you’re not. So ha.”

“Mean,” Bradley mutters, and Derek gives him a bit of the stink eye as he pokes him in the ribs.

“So, what’s up for after dinner?” Stiles says, even though he’s just realized that he’s forgotten to get anything for him and Derek, and so sandwiches it is.

“Derek got a movie,” Sophie says, and points to a Redbox case.

“Rise of the Guardians, huh? I heard it’s really good,” Stiles says, and sets the case down so he can finish making his sandwich. Which Derek then steals right out of his hand, yes, thank you.

Dinner finishes without a problem, although thank god for paper towels or there would be so many problems, and then it’s trying to fit three squirmy children and Derek and Stiles onto the one couch. Stiles ends up in the middle with his arm around Derek (ever since he hit his last, and hopefully final, growth spurt he’s been lording his height over Derek, which Derek actually seems to like, so no one’s complaining), Sophie draped across their laps, Bradley squished under his other arm and Josh nestled into Derek’s side, curled up as small as can be.

It’s dark and comfortable as the movie starts, ads for kids movies that Stiles has no interest in as Derek turns his head, just a little, to put his mouth on Stiles’ cheek. Would it be totally inappropriate to start necking while the kids are clearly absorbed by how brightly colored Wreck It Ralph looks? 

Derek’s mouth has reached his ear and Stiles has determined it’s okay as long as he doesn’t get an erection by the time the movie actually starts, and then Chris Pine’s voice is saying, “It was dark, and I was scared,” and Stiles looks up and there’s a boy underwater.

He has a split second to think “Oh God, no,” before Joshua let’s out a hair-raising scream. Derek jumps, has Josh gathered to his chest and is already striding up to stab the power button on the XBox by the time Stiles realizes that he should move. Stiles jumps up and hits the lights, and then gathers up Sophie because she looks like she’s about to start crying too.

“Josh, shhh, it’s okay, it’s just a movie,” Derek says. He’s pacing with Josh clinging to his neck like a spider monkey, loud sobs muffled into a clump of Derek’s t-shirt.

The sobbing lasts for a long time, Derek pacing and trying to soothe him and Stiles trying not to lose his shit. Finally, the sobs are hiccups, and Josh pulls his face out of Derek’s snotty shirt.

“Do you want us to call your mom?” Stiles asks softly, and Josh shakes his head meekly.

“Wanna go to bed, Joshie?” Bradley asks, peeking over the back of the couch. Josh lets out a shuddery noise, then wipes his nose with his sleeve.

“I wanna watch the rest,” he says hoarsely, and Stiles gives Derek a look. Derek shrugs a little helplessly, then says, 

“I watched Firestarter a lot, after. It helped.”

Stiles takes a deep breath and stands up, letting Sophie slip off his lap.

“Okay. But this time we’re going to do this the awesome way.”

He goes upstairs and finds every blanket and pillow he can, drags them down with him, and then starts dragging in chairs from the kitchen in to surround the couch. After that the fort practically assembles itself, with Bradley lording over them like a foreman. 

“Lights on or off, Josh?” Stiles asks. The three kids are huddled all together in a nest of pillows held together by Derek’s legs, sharing a gigantic stuffed crocodile that Stiles got them at the fair during the summer. 

“Off,” Josh says after a moment’s deliberation, and Stiles turns them off and crawls into the fort with the XBox controller. The ads have already played over, and the movie starts out again. This time everyone waits tensely until Jack Frost rises out of the water, and then Josh says, “Oh. The moon saved him,” and everyone relaxes. 

And then the movie is fucking happy and adorable, even though Pitch makes Bradley flinch and Sophie looks a little too invested in everything Bunnymund says. It has Derek actually grinning every time Tooth comes on screen, and Josh seems fascinated with North. Personally, Stiles is feeling like he might have to watch everything Chris Pine has ever been in, because he’s kind of brilliant as Jack Frost.

By the time Jack blows a snowflake kiss at the screen, Josh is conked out cold, Sophie is drowsy, and Bradley looks deeply satisfied by how Sandy and Jack managed to kick Pitch’s ass. Surprisingly it’s Bradley who picks up Josh, struggling a little under his brother’s weight but managing well on the stairs. Derek gets Sophie, who murmurs something happy about Easter, and Stiles gathers up the blankets they’ll need and follows after. 

The three kids are arranging themselves on Stiles’ bed when he reaches the room, and they take pillows and blankets from him to recreate their nest.

“Stiles?” Josh asks, as Derek makes sure the closet is closed and the window’s locked.

“Yeah bud?”

“Did the moon save Squiggles like it saved Jack?” he asks, eyelids drooping. 

“I think he probably did. After all, Squiggles loved the snow, didn’t he?”

“Mmm,” Josh says, and snuggles into Sophie’s side. 

Stiles waits a little bit, watching them drift off to sleep, before he digs in a desk drawer and plugs in a night light, then turns off the overhead.

“They’re so freaking cute,” Derek says as he stands next to Stiles. He sounds a little dumbfounded by it, and Stiles gets the feeling. Sometimes that's how he feels about Derek, with his dumb pink cat whiskers and his smile and how communicative his frowns can be. And that he loves Stiles.

“Yeah, they are. Oh, wait a sec.”

Stiles pads to the window as quietly as he can and breathes on the pain. There’s already a bit of frost on the window, and the weather reports are calling for more in the morning. He just hopes it doesn’t mess up the drawing he makes with his finger.

“Oh, that’s...” Derek says, a hand sneaking up to Stiles’ hip as he finishes.

“Yeah. Hopefully it’ll cheer him up,” Stiles says, and they leave the drawing of Squiggles and Jack Frost on the window to watch over the kids as they go downstairs to fall asleep in the remains of a blanket fort.


End file.
